1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a towel dispenser which is capable of supplying and taking up a sheet towel of indeterminate length very accurately.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Towel dispensers are known which hold a roll of towel in such a manner as to enable the user to pull and unroll the towel while automatically taking up the used portion of the towel.
In known towel dispensers of the type described, the portion of the towel which has been pulled out and used is suspended and slackened in the form of a loop below the dispenser. Such a slack of the towel imparts an unpleasant feel to the users and is quite unsanitary because of various contaminants attaching thereto.
In order to avoid this problem, a towel dispenser has been proposed in which the loop portion of the towel is automatically taken up in a predetermined time after the use.
This improved towel dispenser, however, still suffers from various drawbacks or shortcomings as stated hereinbelow.
A first problem arises from the construction for supporting a take-up shaft for taking up the used towel. In the above-mentioned improved towel dispenser, both ends of the take-up shaft are slidably and rotatably received in elongated holes formed in opposing side walls of the towel dispenser. As the amount of the used towel portion taken-up by the shaft becomes large, the diameter of the roll of the used towel on this shaft is increased correspondingly. Therefore, both ends of the take-up shaft are progressively slid in the elongated holes to enable the used towel to be taken up over its full length. Both ends of the take-up shaft are projected through the elongated holes to the exterior of the space defined by the side walls, so that there is a risk for the ends of the take-up shaft to interfere with electronic parts and other associated parts outside the side walls. It is, therefore, necessary that the electronic parts and other parts are spaced apart from the side walls, with the result that the size of the towel dispenser as a whole is increased undesirably.
In addition, an end surface of the roll of the used towel tends to contact with the surface of the adjacent side wall, so as to brake the roll during the take-up. Conversely, when there are large gaps between the end surfaces of the roll of the used towel and the side walls, the roll is collapsed in the axial direction so that the appearance is deteriorated seriously.
A second problem is that, since the towel has to move along a complicated path before reaching the take-up roller, a laborious work is required for mounting a new towel in such a manner as to clear the shaft on which the towel is mounted.
A third problem is as follows. The above-mentioned improved towel dispenser has a roller which corresponds to a later-mentioned taxi roller used in the towel dispenser of the present invention. This roller suspends the towel and moves up and down thereby retracting the used towel.
This roller, however, is a free roller which is merely mounted for free rotation so as to be driven by the towel which frictionally engages the roller. The roller, therefore, tends to fail to take-up the towel smoothly. Namely, the space in which the roller moved up and down is extremely small, so that the towel suspending from the roller tends to contact a wall on the rear side of the roller. This in turn causes a problem that, when the roller has come down, the towel remains in the gap so that the towel cannot be fully paid-off even after the roller has come down to its lower stroke end. In order to overcome this problem, it is necessary to increase the space size between the roller and the plate on the rear side of the roller. This results in an increase of the size of the towel dispenser as a whole.
A fourth problem resides in that, since the taxi roller is received at its both ends in elongated holes only for vertical movement along these elongated holes, the work for renewing the towel is very troublesome because the taxi roller is movable only in the vertical direction.
A fifth problem is that the taxi roller tends to be loaded unduly because the user, who is unfamiliar with the operation of the towel dispenser, may wrongly pull the towel while the towel is being retracted by upward movement of the taxi roller. In consequence, there is a risk that the towel dispenser is broken by such an extraordinary load.